Blaze vs Vivoactive hr

[SunsetRunner]

Anybody had experience with the vivoactive hr compared against the blaze?

Just awaiting the arrival of one after giving up on my surge, moving over to the blaze and becoming disillusioned with the watch faces on over and the overall "fashion" feel of the blaze.

It does everything OK but in reality I want a sports watch, not a cheap apple phone clone.

Difficult decision as 4 years of immovable fitbit data totally tied into the deal (that's another story)

Ideal scenario is that fitbit brings put a surge 2 that works.

Interested to see if any fitbit community people have tried the garmin experience but couldn't make the move, or have not looked back?

[Rich_Laue]

Doing searches on the Internet I find that their are times when any wrist based HR monitor may have problems.. When it comes to the HR data on fitbit.com Fitbit normally will displays an average over short periods I think 10 seconds of time, and not the exact data

[bbarrera]

Most complete Vivoactive HR review I've seen:

http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2016/05/garmin-vivoactivehr-review.html

Site also has in-depth reviews for Blaze/Surge/ChargeHR/Alta/etc.

After starting fitness journey with Flex and Force, and losing 30 pounds, I started seriously cycling for fitness and stopped caring about all the data on Fitbit. Now I lift free weights and cycle. Best shape of my life in my mid 50s.

IMHO the Fitbit dashboard is optimized for those that care about step count, walking, running, and calorie counting. I really liked it when starting my fitness journey.

Emotionally it was hard "leaving" the dashboard, but I have a training schedule to prepare for bigger cycling events and to get faster. Fitbit dashboard doesn't help me at all when compared to other sites I use (below).

Still enjoy Fitbit step competitions, using iPhone 5s as step tracker (Fitbit MobileTrack feature). I also own Surge and Blaze, they just don't do enough for me so I wear Apple Watch for excellent notifications and leave "fitness tracking" to TrainingPeaks. A bit of a tech geek, keep hoping firmware updates will improve Surge and Blaze but now, after Fitbit acquired Coin, beginning to believe Fitbit is focused on a GPS smart watch ("Surge 2") and not expecting any improvements to the existing models. Any new features would be welcome, however I firmly believe Fitbit is primarily focused on getting somewhat sedantary people to move, which is great, but I'm not part of that demographic. This focus explains the lack of quality training features on Fitbit trackers. Without training features, the Surge and Blaze aren't serious sport watches.

As a cyclist, I'm using Garmin Edge 520 bike computer with chest strap, cadence meter, and speed meter.

The best part of Garmin experience is openness, after logging a ride the COMPLETE ride (HR/map/cadence/speed/temp) is automatically sync'd to:

- Strava for social

- TrainingPeaks for fitness tracking / training

- MapMyFitness because I have an old account, and a few different views

- Endomondo for syncing with Fitbit, and for auto lap feature - for example I rode 117 miles in mountains last weekend and it breaks down to 1 mile, 2 mile, 5 mile or 10 mile "laps" to get a feeling for average speed without having to manually select like in Strava or TrainingPeaks (paid feature on MapMyFitness)

Garmin Connect is great for auto identification of new personal bests (e.g. fastest 25m ride, lactate threshhold). I'm not a runner, but believe similar features are available if you are a runner. Otherwise I'm more focused on TrainingPeaks as it has better tools for making sure I'm training hard enough, and not over-training. And TrainingPeaks does a good job integrating weight training into fitness data.

As I still use Fitbit app and web dashboard from time-to-time, Garmin-to-Endomondo link handles syncing rides to Fitbit, and ride comes in as an activity but only with distance and speed as Fitbit is not truly open and if you want map then must log with MobileRun on phone, and if you want map+HR then you must log with Surge/Blaze. Fitbit doesn't understand Cadence or temperature, and imported activities also do not have amount of climbing. When recording a ride with Surge/Blaze I do not get correct elevation, a problem that has existed for over a year and still not fixed. And the elevation chart is not integrated into ride timeline.

That's my 2 cents, hope it helps. In summary, if you love competing in step challenges, and aren't serious about training (or use a complementary device like I do), then my personal opinion is that Fitbit One or MobileTrack are the way to go. The One is inexpensive and accurately counts steps, without over counting (e.g. driving), or under counting (e.g. pushing a cart in Costco). MobileTrack works if you keep phone in pocket all day, similarly accurate, but not for everyone although it works well for me.

[SunsetRunner]

Great post bbarrera

Never thought about the mobiletrack option if I do move away from fitbit hardware.
How does it work with battery life on your phone?

[bbarrera]

@SunsetRunner The iPhone 5s (and later) has a special low-power motion co-processor that tracks steps. No real impact on battery life, the motion co-processor is always tracking.

[SunsetRunner]

Cheers for the reply bbarrera

[sebastianshaw]

There you go fella, here's everything you need to know about comparison of Blaze and Vivoactive HR. I know I'm late, but for those who still seek the key differences, it will be helpful